There are some cities at high altitude, such as Quito, Ecaudor and La Paz, Bolivia, where the more affluent, desirable neighborhoods are those at the lower elevations where it's literally easier to breath. In other major cities, the desirability and price of housing may be determined by the proximity to the downtown (a shorter commute), public transportation or even the ocean. One of the major factors residents of San Francisco use in evaluating neighborhoods is the sun. San Francisco is full of small micro-climates. One part of the City can be completely socked in by fog while another part - a mere mile away - can experience a beautiful, sunny day.
When my wife and I lived in San Francisco for three years in the early 1990's, we lived right on the Great Highway (a misnomer because it wasn't really a highway and nothing about it was "Great") in the Sunset district - what locals actually referred to as the Outer Sunset - of San Francisco. I don't know how or why the neighborhood was named the Sunset because it had the least amount of sun of any place in San Francisco. Maybe it was because on a typical summer day the fog didn't clear until the late afternoon - just in time to watch the sun set into the Pacific ocean.
As the foggiest neighborhood in The City, and also the furthest from downtown, it was one of the least hip and most inexpensive in which to live. We paid $800 a month for our two bedroom, third floor apartment - with one covered indoor parking space - in the early 1990's (adjusted for inflation, the equivalent of approximately $1,600 today - still a bargain).
Because it was San Francisco, one of the amusing past times the residents were put through by the local politicians and bureaucrats was the constant need to dodge the "No Parking" signs along our street. The city scheduled a street sweeper to clean one side of the street every Tuesday morning between 8 and 10 a.m. and another side of the street was cleaned every Thursday morning between 8 and 10 a.m. I felt this was never intended as a way of keeping the streets of San Francisco clean, but merely an excuse to extract more revenue from residents each week as they had no choice but to park their cars in an open space late at night on the side of the street that would be scheduled to be cleaned the following morning.
I, unfortunately, fell for this ruse time after time. The parking tickets were much cheaper then (even adjusted for inflation) than they are today. They were more of a nuisance ($15-20) than a budget buster - just another "you're living in San Francisco" tax.
My job often required me to work late and I would regularly return home near midnight, tired and ready for bed, and all the spaces along the side of the road where the parking wasn't prohibited the next morning were taken, leaving the only spaces available those on the other side of the street - where you would be subject to a parking ticket if you didn't move your car by 8 a.m. the next morning. I was forced to just go ahead and park on the side of the street where spaces were still available, and tell myself that I could get out of bed at 7:30 the next morning, and move my car back to the other side of the street. A good theory that didn't always pan out in practice.
My wife, who had our one indoor space and never had to bother with the San Francisco street cleaning/no parking dance, would leave our apartment for work at 7:30 in the morning and remind me to get up and move my car. I would be so exhausted after four days of flying back and forth across the country, that I would roll back over for another fifteen or twenty minutes of sleep and not wake up for 30 or 45 minutes - now past 8 a.m. and into the sacrosanct street sweeping time. Hearing the street sweeper pass our building, I would jump out of bed in a panic, quickly throw on a shirt, pants and a pair of shoes, and dart downstairs to move my car, only to find it had already been ticketed by a friendly local meter maid.
The amazing thing is that the street sweepers and the meter maids - even though they had a two hour slot to clean my street - ALWAYS seem to come by our place at 8:01 a.m. I think every parking ticket I got on the Great Highway was within just 5 or 10 minutes of 8 a.m. I had always returned late the night before and parked on the only side of the street where open spaces were available, and then got dinged the next morning when I couldn't move my sorry, tired butt out of bed. Another victim of the San Francisco parking tax.
My wife and I lived in The City for three years. We enjoyed it, tried to take advantage of all the great things San Francisco had to offer and are still glad we did it. Over the years, I would meet new people at our next home up in Sonoma County who, like us, had lived in The City for several years, enjoyed it and then moved out to have a family and raise kids - and to be able to park in front of their house at night without worrying about discovering a parking ticket the next morning. Not one time during those conversations has anyone ever said they wished they still lived in San Francisco. Not once.
And I think the politicians and powers that be who run San Francisco really want it that way. Come live there for a few years when you're young and childless (San Francisco has the fewest children per household of any major city in America) and want to enjoy the many cultural amenitites that The City has to offer. We will use you as a human ATM machine and suck every dime we can from your wallet with a never-ending list of taxes, fees and fines. You will grow tired of it after a few years and move out, and another new person will move in to take your place, starting the whole process all over again. The Circle of Life in San Francisco. The only thing missing is the score by Elton John.
San Francisco is a great city, but if you live there for long, eventually the urban nuisances will wear you down. The only people I have ever known to use the word "love" and "San Francisco" in the same sentence are people who have never lived there.
Enjoy the sunset. That will be $55. $65 if you don't pay it by the end of the month.
"Excuse me, Miss, is there any meat in this bean casserole?"
"Yes, there is, honey, but it's cut up really small."
Um...okey-dokey.
As a vegetarian for the past twenty-eight years (I eat dairy so I would be classified as a lacto-ovo - from the Latin for "milk" and "egg" - vegetarian, if you're looking for labels), I have had some variation of this conversation literally hundreds of times. I find myself at someone's house, an afternoon picnic or a potluck dinner; and I have to play food detective to determine what's on the menu that I am or am not able to eat.
Many times - especially in the South (where my in-laws reside) or the East Coat (where I worked for years) - simply asking if a dish does or does not contain some type of meat is not enough. I can't tell you how many times - in homes and in restaurants - I have asked if a dish had meat only to have the host or server respond, "Only bacon, but it's cut up really small" or "Only ham, but it's cut up really small."
I never inquired about the portion sizes of the meat. When did the size of a piece of food negate its existence? A small piece of bacon is just as much bacon as a huge piece of bacon. I am quite certain that if you were dining with cannibals and were trying to avoid their diet, the explanation that the soup does contain human flesh, "But it's cut up really small" wouldn't exactly be comforting.
I then am forced into answering a series of long-winded questions of what the restrictions of my diet are (no animal flesh), the different types of vegetarians, how I get my protein, how long have I been a vegetarian, how do I get enough to eat, and then hear the tedious story of their neighbor or Aunt who is a vegetarian, but she eats fish and chicken, and on and on.
It's a conversation I've had so often that I am sick and tired of it. I just don't want to go through it anymore. I am not evangelical about being a vegetarian and have zero interest in converting or educating anyone else about a vegetarian diet. I would just like to eat something without meat. End of story. I don't ask every carnivore I meet why they eat meat. I couldn't care less. Now would you please move your lard ass out of the way so I can have a second helping of the bean casserole? It's delicious.
But for the record:
"Lacto-ovo vegetarians eat dairy products, but no animal flesh or fat. Vegans don't eat animal products of any kind."
"There are numerous ways to get plenty of protein without eating meat. Read a book."
"I have not eaten meat since 1983. How long have you been a carnivore? No, I don't miss it. It's not a struggle. I am not like a recovering addict."
"Anyone can take one look at me and tell I get plenty to eat. I have never gone hungry."
"Your Aunt who says she is a vegetarian but eats fish and chicken is, in fact, NOT a vegetarian of any type or kind, but someone who doesn't eat red meat, and frankly, sounds more than a bit annoying."
I started dropping meat from my diet when I was working full time and running distance races. I would come home late from work and have to go out for a training run. It was tough to run after a heavy meal of meat, but I could do it if I left out the meat. I knew several friends in Los Angeles who were vegetarians at the time, and learned how they did it. It is easy to do in California with a plentiful supply of fresh produce and good vegetarian restaurants, and even most ordinary restaurants offer vegetarians options.
As someone who was a flight attendant for eighteen years, I used to dread going out to dinner with a new crew because at some point, usually just after ordering our meals, someone would ask me if I was a vegetarian and then I would be forced to go in to my well-rehearsed spiel. I hated it. It was tedious and boring.
What was fascinating when I was put in the position of being "outed" as a vegetarian is how quickly it put many people on the defensive. Two or three people at the table would invariably say something like "I should do that" or "I tried it once for a couple of months and couldn't do it."
Guess what? I know that I would be healthier and probably live longer if I didn't eat ice cream and chocolate. You know why I don't drop them from my diet? Because I LOVE ice cream and chocolate. Yes, I would gladly marry either one. Do I worry about it? Not one bit. Never occurred to me until I wrote this sentence and it will be forgotten before I finish this paragraph. What were we talking about?
I have a suggestion for those of you out there who are proud carnivores and love your meat - and this is coming from a longtime vegetarian - have at it! I couldn't care less. Do I believe a vegetarian diet is more efficient and less wasteful? Of course it is! Is it cheaper? You bet! Do I believe it's cruel to kill animals to eat? In some cases I'm sure animals are cruelly treated to put cheap meat on our tables, but I'm not losing any sleep over it. I have no problems wearing leather, as any regular visitor of Folsom Street is well aware. Get over it and leave me alone.
The reaction I received when I was living in Ireland was also interesting. Even though there are numerous cultures and religions around the world that engage in vegetarian diets, they are usually not in wealthy, industrialized countries. Eating large portions of meat on a daily basis is a tremendous sign of wealth. A country like Ireland - which literally was so poor in the 1840's that the era is now referred to as The Great Famine - can't help but hold the opinion anyone who would voluntarily give up meat must be a little nuts.
My Irish Mom, bless her heart, was always going out of her way to cook me something "extra" to replace the meat everyone else was eating. I was fine with everything but the meat. She would question why I ate dairy products as a vegetarian, and I would explain because I was a "Pro-choice" vegetarian. That was not a concept an Irish Catholic mother could easily grasp.
(Each time I would come home from school in Dublin and see the latest dairy delivery sitting out on the front porch - milk, butter, cream and a jar of orange juice - I would ask my Irish family which part of the cow the orange juice came from.)
Pie?
I hope this settles this whole vegetarian thing for a while. I'm fine and I'm not going to try and push my personal choice on anyone else. So if it's okay with you, let's drop it and return to our meal.
Now who wants pie?
(Note: Today's post is dedicated to my friend Joe - yes, a vegetarian - and his sister Tina.)
The entrance to the Walt Disney Studios lot in Burbank, CA.
I worked for Walt Disney Pictures on the the Walt Disney Studios lot (500 South Buena Vista Street, Burbank, CA, 91521 - but who's counting?) in Burbank for just under a year from mid-1987 to mid-1988.
The department I worked in was called Creative Film Services. With a name like that, any idea what the department did or produced? I'll give you a clue: we were a division of the Marketing department. You would see our work every time you walked in to a movie theater. Some of the work we did would go on to become valued by movie memorabilia collectors. You would hear our work on the radio and see it on television. If it's any consolation, I had no idea what the department did either until I started working there. Give up?
Creative Film Services was basically the in-house ad agency for all of the feature films released by Walt Disney Pictures and Touchstone Pictures (Touchstone released all the PG and R rated films that might not be considered worthy of the family-friendly Disney name).
The print side - where I toiled - produced the large, glossy "one sheet" or "lobby" posters of films that you see every time you enter the lobby of a movie theater. The print department also produced the graphics that would make up the print ads that would be placed in newspapers and free weeklies around the country.
Down the hall was the A.V. side of the department that produced the radio and TV ads and "coming attractions" or "preview" trailers.
Walt Disney Pictures had just exited a long period of creative and financial stagnation, and under the new management of Michael Eisner and Jeffrey Katzenberg - both new to Disney after successful runs at Paramount Pictures - would greatly increase the slate of films produced, as well as diversify the subject matter. Disney was not just going to produce family-friendly, G-rated, kiddie fare anymore.
I was brought in, on a temporary basis through a staffing agency, to be the assistant to the Director of Creative Film Services, basically the Art Director on the print side. He was a young, brash, temperamental New Yorker who had graduated from a highly regarded Art & Design school in New York and then been recruited from an ad agency in New York to come West and help create this in-house ad agency for Disney. He was definitely a fish out of water in Hollywood, but he had artistic talent. Most importantly in that business, he could produce work quickly.
It would be a couple of months before I would learn that he had previously gone through assistants like Bon Jovi goes through hair products. Everyone was amazed that I stuck. He was definitely a difficult person to work for, but we got along fine.
I arrived in the summer of 1987 - fresh out of college - and the studio was starting to ramp up the marketing of what management thought would be its big Holiday hit at the end of the year - Three Men and a Baby.
The lobby poster for Three Men and a Baby.
Three Men and a Baby, starring Tom Selleck, Steve Guttenberg and Ted Danson, was a remake of a French film that followed three working professionals, confirmed bachelors, who found themselves suddenly responsible for a young baby girl. Comedy hijinks ensued. None of the stars were "hot" or expensive at the time, and the film was shot in Toronto (less expensive due to the exchange rate).
It was what the new Disney management loved most in a film: low risk, low budget with the possibility of a high reward.
About a month after I started working in the department, when it appeared I was going to stick around for a while, I was told to go into an empty office and watch a videotape of the latest cut of Three Men and a Baby on a small TV. It was a still a couple of months away from its release date, so the cut was very rough - the music hadn't been scored yet, there was plenty of ADR, Foley and sound mixing work that still needed to be done, the print wasn't color corrected and the transitions (fades, dissolves, wipes, etc.) were still indicated with marks on the film from a grease pencil. I was familiar with looking at a film in this condition because it looked just like the prints of films I had worked on in college. It was the first time, however, that I had seen a major studio film under these conditions.
I sat alone in the office, admittedly not the best of conditions to view a comedy, for ninety minutes and watched the movie. Maybe it was the fact that I was getting paid to watch it, or the thrill of seeing a work print of a major studio picture for the first time - or perhaps the undeniable giddiness of watching the great Steve Guttenberg - but I thoroughly enjoyed the film. I was definitely on board with everyone else at the studio who seemed to think this would be one of the biggest comedy hits of the Holidays. Scheduled for release on Thanksgiving weekend, it would be a great date movie for couples of all ages.
Or so I thought. You never knew for sure in that business. There were stories of plenty of movies that everyone inside the studio loved before it was released, and tested well for preview audiences, only to die a quiet death once it was released in the open marketplace. This was going to be the first time I would form my own opinion on the financial viability of a film long before it had been released to the public. Would my opinion hold up? In Hollywood, the public is ALWAYS right.
One of my main responsibilities in the office was to catalog and organize the literally thousands and thousands of large, white, hard cardboard composite sketches - internally known as "comps" - that were mock-ups of prospective one sheet posters for a movie. The sketches and concepts for a movie's poster would start as soon as the movie went into production. Everyone working on the marketing of the movie would have access to the original script and a rough cut of the film shortly after it finished production. We would also see hundreds of production stills - photographs from the set of the movie - that would give us an idea of the look and feel of the film.
I would estimate that Disney had about 30 films in various stages of production while I was there - from the most recent "greenlight" picture that would eventually be titled Cocktail and star Tom Cruise (which I read before it was produced and just didn't understand why they were making it), to the carefully calculated re-releases of such Disney animated classics as Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs and Cinderella - and each one of these projects had 100 - 200 composite sketches for the final one sheet poster. It was common for my boss to ask me to gather 15-20 composite sketches of an upcoming release that were first presented to studio head Jeffrey Katzenberg six months earlier, and that he wanted to see again in his office in ten minutes.
The iconic Mickey Mouse water tower on the Disney Studios lot in Burbank,
I found it was quite common that if the perfect concept was presented in the initial marketing meeting for a movie - even if everyone loved it and thought it was perfect - the entire department went through the same steps and machinations and produced hundreds and hundreds of these composite sketches only - always at the last minute - to return to the idea originally presented in the first meeting six months earlier.
If you move to a new town and are looking to buy a new house and the first one you see looks perfect, you're still going to spend a couple of more days looking at homes to see if anything better is out there, right? It's human nature. I was amazed how often the first idea out of the box won the day.
As concepts and ideas started to become clearer and details of the artwork and copy came into focus, in-house copywriters and freelancers on the outside would come up with pages and pages of tag lines - the catchy and clever one or two sentences at the top or bottom of a movie poster that make you interested in seeing the film - from which only one line would be chosen to appear on the finished poster.
My boss encouraged me to have a go at copywriting and I did submit pages and pages of taglines for a couple of movies that were in production, but I didn't have a knack for it and nothing ever stuck.
I was involved with a lot of the accounting (billing, invoices, payments, etc.) on the posters and art work that went through our department, and I saw that our typical budget for a major studio release was about $200,000 (double that in today's dollars). That included trips to the film location and New York for my boss, paying artists to draw the hundreds of composite sketches along the way, paying the copywriters, paying a name celebrity/fashion photographer for a photo shoot, or an artist for the final artwork if it was a painting and the cost of the final run of 5,000 or so glossy lobby posters.
If memory serves me correctly, well-known celebrity/fashion photographer Annie Leibovitz did the photo that would wind up as the artwork for the Three Men and a Baby poster. My department worked with her and Greg Gorman quite a bit, but I think she did that one. Their typical rates were $15,000 - 20,000 for a one or two day photo shoot (again, double that to get the equivalent in today's dollars).
(Side note for Trekkies: Most people probably don't remember that actor Leonard Nimoy directed Three Men and a Baby. As the director, he had some input to the marketing of the movie. I never met him in person, but spoke with him several times over the phone, and he was always polite, friendly and intelligent.)
Three Men and a Baby was finally released on November 29, 1987. It grossed $10 million on its opening weekend - a smash hit - and would go on to make over $150 million in the U.S. - the highest grossing film released in 1987. I guess I was able to smell a hit.
At the same time that my department was working overtime on marketing Three Men and a Baby - a film that everyone felt had big, commercial smash hit written all over it - I was rooting for a more serious, sometimes violent, melancholy war film with comic moments starring Robin Williams - who was not a big box office draw at the time - that was directed by one of my favorite Directors: Barry Levinson (Diner, The Natural, Tin Men).
The studio's faith in the film was shown by the fact that they quietly released it on only four screens during the last week of of 1987. Shot on a low budget of only $13 million dollars (double that for inflation and that would still be a very low budget Hollywood film), it would go on to gross over $100 million and garner Robin Williams an Academy Award nomination for Best Actor.
Come back next week and we'll discuss what I learned about film marketing on Good Morning, Vietnam.
There are three things that Californians hold most dear above all else in life: their undying devotion to their individual automobiles, their more recent, but just as devoted, relationship with their iPhones and their fervent belief that representative democracy means that every election cycle we must wade our way through dozens and dozens of state and local ballot initiatives or propositions.
As a registered voter in California in the twenty-first century, you are mailed so many pamphlets and voting guides for each election that engaging in what was once the simple civil act of voting now resembles cramming for the S.A.T.
The statewide initiative process in California is outlined and protected in the state constitution. The initiative process itself in California was a reaction to the corruption and power wielded by the railroads in the state at the beginning of the last century.
Proposition 13, which capped property taxes and was passed in 1978, was the most important and far-reaching ballot initiative during my lifetime, and its success set off a wave of city, county and state ballot initiatives that seem to grow exponentially in number and complexity each election. If an elected official wants to commit political suicide in California, all one has to do is muse about the mere thought of revising Prop. 13.
I haven't run across many people in the Bay Area who, like myself, have lived in Sonoma County during the past twenty years and notice more than a passing resemblance to rural, agricultural San Jose in the 1970's. I didn't know anyone else in Sonoma County who had once lived in San Jose and I've yet to encounter anyone in San Jose who has even visited Sonoma County. They're two places only a hundred miles apart, but they might as well exist in different countries.
A verdant valley with dozens of farms, wineries and open stretches of untouched landscape accompanied by a dry, Mediterranean climate and surrounded by beautiful mountains, San Jose was at a crossroads in the 1970's and chose high tech jobs, unplanned suburban sprawl and growth over preservation of any kind. It is now, without question, the Los Angeles of the Bay Area.
An affluent city of nearly a million people that sprawls unchecked across the entire floor of the Santa Clara Valley, there isn't a notable cultural attraction - a fine museum, gallery, world-class symphony, ballet or theatre company or a notable restaurant within the city limits. The majority of the voters in San Jose have never considered any of that important.
The new billion dollar terminal at San Jose Airport.
The expensive rinky-dink airport, which must be one of the major civic job generators in the county because the thing has been under construction the entire two years I've lived here, only has two international flights - both to Mexico - and two daily flight to the East Coast - one to Boston and one to New York. San Jose thinks small on a big city scale.
Since we returned to San Jose two years ago, I can't recall a conversation with someone here that even remotely touched on food, a restaurant, a play, a museum or a book. If it doesn't have a .com at the end, it might as well not exist. In Sonoma County, it was damn near impossible to walk out to the mail box and not have someone mention their latest meal out or what gourmet goodies were fresh that week at the market.
Sonoma County was far more rural and agricultural than San Jose in the 1970's, and it also had a more extensive wine and tourist industry, and soon would have a far greater appreciation for good, fresh food and fine dining. But unlike San Jose, Sonoma has also always had an arty, funky and politically active side. There's a reason Tom Waits lives in Sonoma County, not San Jose.
A flyer announcing another protest.
Let me give a simple example. Large protests in the small Sonoma County town of Occidental each summer, calling attention to and protesting the presence of the world's power brokers at the Bohemian Grove, are as much an annual rite of Summer as swimming in the Russian River.
You move the Bohemian Grove down to the foothills of the Santa Cruz Mountains near San Jose, and nobody cares and nobody has ever heard of it. I'm sure any longtime residents of San Jose reading this are thinking to themselves, "Bohemian Grove? What in the hell is Bohemian Grove?"
As the inevitable growth of the Bay Area moved north towards Sonoma in the 1970's and 1980's, residents looked to what was happening on the other side of the Bay in San Jose and nearly unanimously agreed they didn't want Sonoma County to become THAT.
A greenbelt movement was born to buy farms and lease them back to farmers, use zoning regulations to try and keep the agricultural areas green and restrict building and growth to the cities. If you drive north on Highway 101 from San Francisco through Marin and Sonoma Counties, you will notice that there are miles and miles of open space between towns and cities. The North Bay - despite seeing huge growth in population in the past twenty years - has still retained its unique agricultural and rural feel while moving into the twenty-first century.
The only greenbelt in San Jose would be Interstate 280, which connects the bedroom communities of San Jose with the high paying dot-com and high tech jobs in nearby Palo Alto and Menlo Park.
Sebastopol, California - a Nuclear Free Zone.
Throughout much of the 1990's and up to today, many of the more prominent local countywide ballot initiatives in Sonoma County dealt with growth and how it should be handled. Should the freeway be widened from four lanes to six? No, maybe and eventually yes. Should Sonoma County have a commuter railroad? No, maybe, Yes. Should there be some limits on building on hillsides that surrounded the valley? Yes. Should a housing development be permitted in a large, open space that had been the site of a devastating brush fire twenty years earlier? Yes, it was. Should a shopping mall be permitted atop a rebuilt hill that suffered a massive mudslide twenty years earlier? Yes, it could and the hill's still moving. Should you be able to enter Sebastopol - the scenic and charming town that anchors the West County of Sonoma - with a nuclear warhead? Build your own reactor? Sorry, you can't do that. The voters have spoken.
As growth continued and ballot initiatives were used more and more in Sonoma County to curb and contain growth, one tactic became the final card played in every election that featured a growth or anti-growth proposition: if we do or don't pass this proposition, we will head down the road to becoming San Jose. Not San Francisco, not Los Angeles, Stockton or Oakland. San Jose. The worst possible outcome for most residents of Sonoma County is that one day it will resemble San Jose. That was the Ace in the Hole. It was the winning hand every time. No card-carrying Sonoman wanted Sonoma County to bear any resemblance to Santa Clara County, and especially not San Jose. Forty years ago they were similar; today they are nothing alike.
I take the right and responsibility to vote seriously, and usually make it a point to study the issues and vote wisely in each election, but the growing ballot initiative industry in California is making that difficult. There are elections now when the propositions are so convoluted, or the arguments are so convincing from both sides, that as a voter you just are not sure whom to trust.
The vast majority of state government spending in California has been set by voter mandates from piecemeal ballot initiatives, leaving the governor or legislature little room to make discretionary budget decisions. So much is approved one proposition at a time that the voters approve money for schools and hospitals in one election, jails and highways in the next election and then parks and police and fire protection in the next election. They are all important and worthy budget expenditures, but they shouldn't be decided one issue at a time from year to year. They need to be decided as a whole on an annual basis. That's why we elect a governor and a legislature.
I would love to stay and tell you more about the initiative and proposition process here in California, but the next election is less than a month away and those ballot pamphlets and voting guides are stacking up on the kitchen table. I gotta' get to work.
The Desperados hockey club in Santa Rosa in 2008. In this photo, I'm actually wearing the "A" for alternate captain in the center of the first row.
My lovely Louisianian wife, oddly enough, was the first Captain of an ice hockey team in our house. Being the team captain in any level of ice hockey is a position and honor unmatched in any other team sport. Some great hockey captains, like Mark Messier, can be forceful and vocal leaders on and off the ice. Others, like Steve Yzerman, are quieter and just lead by example. Most hockey captains are usually among the best players on the team at the higher levels, but even in the NHL you may find some captains who are just grind it out "lunch pail" types of guys who give you their best effort every night.
At every level of hockey, each team is permitted to have one captain wearing the "C" on their sweater and up to two alternate captains who wear the "A's". They are supposed to be the only players on the ice to speak with the officials during a game. They are expected by the coaching staff, and their teammates, to be leaders on and off the ice.
Each season there are a couple of NHL teams without a captain that designate three players to wear "A's" and share the leadership responsibility. Teams without a captain are usually younger and lacking veteran leadership. I would argue they also have an idiot for a General Manager (I'm talking to you Colorado and Florida) because you shouldn't ever have an NHL team without a player who isn't capable of being the Captain.
Charles Schulz - the longtime Peanuts cartoonist - owned the ice rink in Santa Rosa and decided in the late 1990's that there should be more women playing hockey in his rink in Santa Rosa. He recruited a couple of coaches, donated one of his coveted weekly mid-evening ice slots to the women and, for the first time, hired a security guard to patrol the rink's parking lot, so the women would feel safe coming and going from their car to the rink.
Word went out that women of all ages were encouraged to come to these weekly clinics. After a few months, they built up a core of about 20 hockey playing women and formed a team, the Storm, in the lowest level - "C" league - late night adult league.
The Storm played a couple of seasons in the lower level adult league and some of the women - especially the younger, athletic ones - took to the game so much and improved so rapidly that they left the women's team - the Storm - and moved up to other teams in the faster, higher skilled "B" league.
Eventually most of the women dispersed among the teams in the adult leagues with a core few remaining with the original Storm. As the original women of the Storm moved to different teams, my wife was soon chosen as the Captain of the Storm. She was friendly, had been on the women's team from the beginning and was the only female USA Hockey certified coach at the rink (she helped teach the beginner "Basics" class to youngsters on Saturday mornings).
I helped her out behind the scenes in compiling her roster and making sure everyone had their paperwork filled out correctly and made their payments on time. She had to order new sweaters, numbers and front logo patches for any new players joining the team. Before each game she had to make up her lines - groups of three forwards and pairs of defensemen - who would play together during the game. She would be the designated person to speak with the officials should the need arise during the game. Even though she was never their best player, she was their leader.
As I helped out as an assistant coach on a couple of my boys' hockey teams, I was witness to the leadership dynamic at an early age. How it worked and sometimes how it didn't work. I was also present each time we counted the votes for captains on each team. The captains were usually voted nearly unanimously and the two assistant captains usually stood above anyone else as well. And I don't ever recall a team voting themselves inappropriate captains. It was something they took seriously and did quickly without much thought or reflection. Everyone knew who their leaders were.
I was assigned to a team when I first joined the adult league in Santa Rosa and stuck around on that same team for years and years. The roster would always have several changes from season to season - some guys would move up to the "B" league while some would take a season off and come back later - but the basic core group of guys remained from year to year. Eventually a couple of captains moved on and it was my turn to be the Captain of my team.
I was an obvious choice at that point. I had been around for years and was well-known among my teammates and at the rink, I was the only USA Hockey certified coach on my team and I was reasonably organized and responsible. I asked the guys if anyone objected or if they wanted to take a vote, and everyone just shrugged their shoulders and said, "Sure, yeah, whatever."
I started typing out spreadsheets of the roster with ages, addresses, contact numbers, etc. I sent out e-mails to make sure I knew who was returning for the next season and tried to recruit new players to fill in open positions. I ensured everyone had made their hockey payments to the rink.
Prior to every game I would go through my available line-up and determine lines and defense pairings for that night's game. I begged everyone to call or e-mail me before the game if they weren't going to be there, so I knew what I had to work with, but there were always a couple of guys who wouldn't show up and wouldn't let me know.
I had a small magnetic board with a series of small 1" magnets with every players name on our team. I would arrange the names as they would play during the game. The first forward line to start the game would be the first three magnets at the top. The left wing would be on the left side, center in the middle and right wing on the right, etc. Just below the three lines (hopefully) of forwards would be the two or three pairs of defensemen (less people would show up for the later games which started at 10:30 at night) placed in the order they would go out on the ice and which side - left or right - they would play during the game.
I would come to the rink with an idea of my lines and pairs made out and then make a few small adjustments during the warm-up as I sized up who was and wasn't in attendance that evening. Some players would request a position or linemate before the game, and I always tried to accommodate any reasonable request. I would call everyone together after the warm-up and announce the lines. I would then place the magnetic board in front of the forwards, up against the boards of the rink, so they could look down and see where they were supposed to be during the game.
The board thing was pretty anal - most captains just wrote their lineups on a piece of paper and crossed out anyone who hadn't shown up that night - but I found it really easy to adjust and use. I received a lot of ribbing about it from the guys, but one night I forgot to bring it and told them to just do what they normally do and complete panic ensued. I believe we received a couple of "too many men on the ice" penalties because of the confusion as well. Next week, I brought back the lineup board.
Many nights there really was very little difference between the kids and the adults. Even though I'm not a skilled hockey player or veteran coach, I had enough hockey knowledge to point some things out to the beginner players to help them improve their game.
I would beg and plead for everyone to take shorter, more intense shifts (a good hockey shift is about a minute - shorter in a higher level game), instruct them on the various ways to cheat on a face-off and give them tips for positioning.
No adult hockey league teams have practices as a part of the league - although I would usually schedule 4 or 5 each summer and bring in various coaches to help us out - so you had to instruct players on the fly.
One night I noticed a newer player who was really energetic and always around the net getting frustrated because he couldn't buy a goal. He was always so close to the net that when a rebound came out it went by him so quickly that he couldn't even react. Plus, he was so close to the goalie that he didn't have too much of an angle to get a puck by the goalie. I suggested he back out a bit - stop five feet from the goalie instead of right on top of him and that would give him more time to react and shoot. He tried it and scored a couple of shifts later.
As a Captain, I never yelled at a referee during a game. I knew most of our adult league refs off the ice and didn't want to give them a hard time, but I just felt it was counter-productive. They weren't going to change a call they had just made and you didn't want to tick them off for the rest of the game. My tact was more to stand next to a ref just before a face-off and quietly say to him, "Might have missed that last call," if I thought they were wrong. Occasionally they would admit they didn't have a great view or that the other ref who made the call might have blown it. It's all part of the game. We would often get a "make-up" call to even things out a few minutes later. That's hockey.
I prided myself on not taking penalties - I had seen in my years around hockey that good players usually didn't take many penalties - and could get worked up if guys took stupid penalties in close games. But when I sensed the moment was right, I would occasionally take a dumb penalty to fire the guys up.
One night we were slow and lifeless and went down 3-0 early in the game. An opposing player shot the puck on our goalie and skated right towards him as the goalie froze the puck. He sprayed the goalie with ice as he stopped - a common intimidation trick in hockey. Sensing we needed a change in momentum, I immediately rushed over and just ran right through the guy - knowing I would get a penalty. What I didn't expect is that the ref called the other player for the spray as well, meaning it didn't cost my team anything.
As I took a rare trip to the penalty box - which was right next to our team's bench - I could hear the guys on my team yelling and getting all fired up because I had played a little feisty and gone after someone trying to run our goalie. From that moment on, the game completely changed. Our whole team played with a little more jump and toughness. We scored a couple of shifts later, tied the score by the middle of the game and went on to win 5-3. My little penalty was the turning point of the game. It got the boys fired up. I never could have hoped for such an instantaneous and potent reaction, but I knew we needed something.
My oldest son, center, holding the championship banner after winning the California 16A State Championship last April. He was the team's Captain.
My oldest son has been the Captain of his hockey teams the past two seasons here in San Jose. In past seasons, he has often been an alternate captain, but never worn the "C." He wasn't the most highly skilled player on either team, but he was friendly, inclusive, smart and tough. He seemed to get along with everyone and tried his best to keep them together. Both teams had terrific chemistry on and off the ice and they won the state championship in their 16A bracket last year. You know everyone is pulling in the same direction when you have a winning team like that.
I will never forget him telling me a story about their pregame warm-up early in the year his first season as Captain. The captains in youth hockey usually lead the boys through their off ice pregame warm-up to get them ready for the game. Boys being boys, many of them resist doing anything too strenuous they don't see as necessary. The team typically goes out for a little half mile run to get their blood pumping and warm them up. Every youth team does this at every level, especially in California, and just finds a place to run inside if the weather is inclement outside.
So my son's team is standing outside an opponent's rink after an hour drive from San Jose, ready to start their warm-up run, and one of the kids tells my son he's kind of tired and how about if they don't run all the way around the rink today. My son - the Captain - thinks on it for a moment and suggests instead of running ALL the way around the rink they just run halfway around - and then come back. Everyone else ponders that for a moment and agrees that's a good compromise and is happy. They then proceed to run halfway around the rink and then turn around and come back the same way. I laughed when I first heard my son tell me that story and I smile every time I think about it.
One of the baseball diamonds at the Rincon Valley Little League in Santa Rosa, CA.
My two boys played in the Rincon Valley Little League in Santa Rosa for five seasons. They were both on the same teams until their final two seasons when my older, larger son was drafted "up" to the "Majors" division.
This was the division where the managers were all under the delusion they were Joe Torre or Tony LaRussa, the games were played with an intensity and seriousness that would have put a Major League World Series game to shame and where if you weren't one of the top guns, you would only play your minimum required number of innings in the field and get your minimum number of at bats; even if the game was a 12-2 blow-out.
The entire culture and ethic of this league - where he played on one of the top teams - was enough to drive my oldest son out of baseball after two years of this crap. I couldn't blame him. He was twelve years old. Another Life lesson learned.
My younger, smaller son, however, would wind up playing on a motley team of baseball misfits in the "Minors" division, lovingly drafted by a man who was a baseball fanatic. Unfortunately, if you're only goal was winning, he cared more about everyone having a good experience playing baseball and getting a chance to play each position and have different people as teammates (he always seemed to draft any girls available and both years we actually were the only team with two girls on the roster - both good players). All and all, I think it was more fun to play and coach in this lower "Minors" league.
Somehow this Manager recruited me as one of his assistant coaches. I never played the game at a high level or coached baseball at any level. I figured my job was to show up and coach first base and let the kids know when to run, slide and stop. Pretty simple.
Our team seemed to get pounded each season. Opposing teams would rack up incredibly lopsided games against us. And if a game was close in the late innings, they would start to panic and bring in their top pitchers to shut us down. There wasn't a worse fate to opposing teams in the Minors than losing to our team - the Indians.
But somehow, with the baseball gods taking pity on us, miraculously, we managed to squeak out a win or two each season.
My youngest son was a huge part of one memorable victory the second season. Somehow, and I'm not quite sure how this happened, he developed a "blooper" pitch with the coaching and encouragement of his Manager. I don't recall if he saw my son throw it a couple of times in a game or practice or if he taught it to him.
My son could throw a slow, high arc pitch that was almost like a high lob pitch in a Sunday afternoon softball game. It was a "blooper" pitch. The trick was that he could throw it for strikes. Some of the umpires wouldn't call it properly because it started off so high, but most of them would call it as a strike if it came over the plate between the batters' knees and chest - which it usually did.
The first time my son faced a new opposing team from the pitcher's mound, the opposing batters didn't seem to know what to think of it. They were inclined to just let it go by. And if the umpire was paying attention and called it a strike, well, then they kicked their cleats down in the dirt and tried to take a closer look at this thing. But it was deceptively tough to hit.
But here's where things got interesting. You see, not only could my son throw this high, slow "blooper" pitch all day long - his motion was so relaxed when he threw it that there wasn't any stress on his arm - but he actually had a regular pitch, his version of a fastball, that he could usually throw right down the plate for a strike. It wouldn't have appeared fast compared to other pitchers or been effective by itself, but it really threw batters off after watching two or three of the "blooper" pitches going by.
Our Manager called the pitches from the dug-out and had an excellent sense of which pitch to throw to keep the batters off stride. After each pitch, my son would walk towards the catcher and retrieve the ball, take a look into the dug-out on his way back to the mound and get the signal for the next pitch from the Manager. He would usually nod and sometimes he would crack a sly smile. I think the Manager took his hat off if he wanted the "blooper" pitch. It was pretty simple.
So the misfit Indians were nearing the end of the season with nary a win. My son started one of the final games of the season on the mound and was throwing his "blooper" pitch and his fastball quite well. The umpire was calling the blooper pitches strikes if they went through the strike zone.
The first time through the order, my son kept the batters off balance enough that most of them struck out or grounded out weakly to an infielder. This was Little League, so there were always errors and miscues on the simplest of plays, but we were doing pretty well after two innings.
Now he had to get through the order a second time and the opposing players had seen a lot of this pitch. They had slowed down every reaction and motion in their body to hit this pitch. If you were ready for it and patient, you could hit this pitch over the fence, but that was a rare occurrence. It was a huge adjustment for a 10 or 11 year old to make.
My son made it through the third inning - the games were six innings - and we were leading at the halfway mark in the game. We had an excellent, hard-throwing relief pitcher - the Manager's son - if my son could just get through one more inning.
You could sense the opposing team's players - and most prominently their parents - starting to get a little restless as the game moved along with the lowly Indians in the lead. My son was starting to tire a bit and struggling with his control. We really needed him to get through this inning.
There was supposed to be a pitch count in Little League, but we never even kept track when my son was pitching because he didn't throw that hard and there wasn't any stress on his arm. He just mixed speeds and threw strikes. And this was his final outing of the season.
The Manager called "time" and asked if I would like to go out to the mound and check on how my son was feeling. As I walked out to the mound, some panicked overzealous Mom on the other team yelled at me that he was already over the pitch count. Really? It's the second to last game of the season and you're keeping track of the pitch count for the opposing team? I just glared at her and yelled, "Lady, gimme a break!"
I walked up to the mound and asked my son how he was feeling and if he thought he could get through this inning. I told him not to worry if they hit the ball. Just change speeds and throw strikes. Let the fielders do their work. He nodded and I walked back to the dug-out.
You could read my son's determination on his face as the next batter stepped into the batter's box. He crouched down low and looked intently at the catcher, his pitching arm swaying limply by his side, just like he was a Big League pitcher.
He threw a couple of "bloopers" for strikes and then threw his fastball towards the plate. The batter hit the ball, but not hard because he was off balance after the two previous "blooper" pitches and grounded out to second base. My son smiled as he returned to the mound.
"Blooper," fastball, "blooper" and another batter grounded weakly out. He just needed one more batter.
The next batter was able to foul off a couple of his "bloopers" and it was obvious my son was getting tired, but he hung in there. He threw a fastball just off the plate and then reared back slowly with one last "blooper." It seemed to hang in the air forever - tantalizing any batter who could wait on it long enough to hit it cleanly - and the batter swung in an awkward arc and missed. Strike three. My son had made it through four innings and kept the lead.
The Manager now put his son out on the mound. His son was quite small, but a skilled and talented baseball player (he now plays high school ball). If he was on his game, he threw the ball hard from the mound.
The first batter walked to the plate, undoubtedly relieved he didn't have to face that stupid "blooper" pitch any more, and dug in to beat the Indians. And then the Manager's son went in to his wind-up and fired a real fastball right down the plate. "Pop!" This was like looking at Randy Johnson after batting against my son for the last four innings. He just mowed them down for the next two innings. The opposing parents and coaches got more and more talkative and antsy as the game dwindled down to the final outs. They were going to be the underperforming team of the season that would lose to the lowly Indians. And that kid's stupid "blooper" pitch.
We won the game and the kids got to charge the mound after their victory for the first and only time that season. They had earned it and savored it. It was a thing of beauty. It was more fun than anything my other son experienced in the "Majors."
Thankfully, that was my boys' final season of baseball. My wife and I had wanted them to play something other than hockey during the summer, and to have some actual time outside of an ice rink, but Little League had shown its true colors by that point and had come up wanting. We had all seen enough. It was slow, poorly coached and had little team chemistry. But mostly, it just wasn't hockey.
But I think there was a lesson to be learned there. Strikes come in all different sizes, shapes and speeds. The best pitcher isn't necessarily the one who throws the hardest, but the one who can throw strikes and change speeds. It's much easier to throw the ball by someone if they don't know what's coming and are off balance. That's how brains beat brawn in baseball.
An aerial view of Treasure Island in San Francisco Bay.
When you commit to writing a daily online column or blog, one of the things that occurs is you will find yourself doing something you might not ordinarily do under the justification, "Well, if nothing else, maybe I'll get a blog post out of it."
So with that in mind, and a little free time, I responded to an online posting from a local casting agent looking for people to be extras on a TV show, filming last week on Treasure Island in San Francisco. The pay wasn't great and Treasure Island is an hour drive from my house in San Jose, but I didn't have anything else planned and, hey, I might get a blog post out of it.
I e-mailed the casting director with a short message and attached a recent picture. And as if just to prove that timing is everything in life and Television, the casting director e-mailed me back within minutes. She was looking for someone to play "Airport Cop #3" on Friday morning.
We continued to exchange a couple of e-mails where I replied that I thought I would make a fine Airport Cop #3 and she said wardrobe requested the character be dressed all in black. I could do that. The final catch? My participation wouldn't be confirmed until Thursday night and, if confirmed, I would need to be on the set at 6:30 a.m. on Friday. I was familiar enough with television production schedules that the early call time didn't surprise me.
Just after six p.m. on Thursday afternoon, I received another e-mail from the casting agent asking if I was still up for playing an Airport Cop at 6:30 a.m. the next day on Treasure Island. She needed to confirm me by 8 p.m. I called her voicemail and confirmed. My first big break. After living in Los Angeles for seven years and never once being an "extra" or "background artist" - a person in the background of a scene - on a film or television show, I was now on the call sheet as "Airport Cop #3."
Now for those of you not from the Bay Area, or if you have never visited the Bay Area, let me give you a little background on Treasure Island. It is a small (535 acres), man-made, perfectly flat island that was created from sludge and fill from the bottom of San Francisco Bay in 1936 - 1937 to provide a site for the 1939 Golden Gate International Exposition (World's Fair).
One of the buildings constructed, now known as the Administration Building, was to be built as a permanent structure and, after the Exposition, would be the terminal for the new airport where Pan Am Clipper seaplanes would arrive and depart.
A Pan Am Clipper docked at Treasure Island. The Bay Bridge is in the background.
With the possibility of World War II on the horizon, the U.S. government thought the site might make a good naval base and swapped it for Mills Field in Millbrae, just south of San Francisco, that would go on to become San Francisco's international airport.
Treasure Island became the major departure point for U.S. soldiers shipping out to the Pacific during World War II. It remained a Navy base for the next fifty-six years until it was decommissioned in 1996 and turned over to San Francisco.
The City of San Francisco finally approved a plan earlier this year to develop Treasure Island into a new neighborhood with a population of nearly 20,000 people. It's fair to say that Treasure Island is the most valuable piece of undeveloped property in the City of San Francisco.
After the government decided to close the base in the 1990's, Treasure Island and its voluminous airplane hangars were ideally suited as film studios for any TV or film production shooting in San Francisco. Flubber, Patch Adams, Rent and The Matrix were among the films shot in the studios on Treasure Island. Most prominently for TV viewers, Treasure Island was used both for exterior and interior shooting for the TV show Nash Bridges.
Even though I have lived in the Bay Area most of my life and lived in San Francisco for over three years in the early 1990's, I had never set foot on Treasure Island. I knew it was there. I knew it was built for the Exposition and that now it mostly sat vacant while the U.S. government and the City of San Francisco argued over how it should be developed, and that it was the occasional base for film companies shooting in The City.
So last Friday I was up early and in my car - dressed from head to toe in black - and heading north to the Bay Bridge at 5:15 in the morning. It was dark out and early enough in the morning commute that you could still move at the speed limit. I stopped for a moment at the Bay Bridge toll booth to pay my toll (six bucks!), drove halfway over the bridge and, for the first time in my life, took the exit marked "Treasure Island."
I exited from the Bay Bridge and maneuvered my car on to the narrow and winding roads of Yerba Buena Island - the natural island that is connected to Treasure Island. I knew if I just kept driving downhill I would eventually find Treasure Island.
The road started to straighten out and through the darkness I could make out a few lights ahead on Treasure Island. I slowed at a lighted guard shack with a man standing inside - I wasn't sure if access to the island was restricted or not - but he waved me through. I never did figure out why he and the guard shack were there.
Looking closely at my map, I made a couple of turns and thought I was at the production office address I was given, but there didn't seem to be enough activity - there was only one large truck parked on the side of the building - to indicate a TV production. I drove around the block and came back, deciding I must have the right spot.
The building had been the old library on the base and was now the production office and small studio of a basic cable show on the Discovery channel that re-enacted interesting cases of criminals on the run.
I had worked on student films and big budget network TV shows in the past. This production was somewhere in the middle, but so low budget that it was closer to the student film side.
I poked my head into an open door at the top of a ramp leading into the building, and saw a couple of living room sets and light stands inside the building. This must be the place. A crew member took one look at me and pointed at the other side of the set and told me to check in over there.
As I reached the other side of the set, a petite young woman with long curly hair stopped me and introduced herself. She was the head of wardrobe and was sizing me up. She noticed I was wearing a CCM jacket and asked if I played hockey. She was from Buffalo and we talked hockey for a few minutes and then she led me to the talent "holding" area.
She, like everyone else in the production company, looked incredibly tired. They were on their last day of filming this episode - I would later learn they had worked late the night before - and she had that lowered metabolism and energy level that only someone working on a film shoot could have.
The talent "holding" area was a 20' x 20' room that gave drab a bad name. No dressing rooms or trailers on this show. The gray walls looked as if they hadn't been painted since the Navy left. There were four chairs lined up along each wall and a flat of bottled water was unceremoniously placed on the floor. I was the first one to arrive and claimed a chair in a corner.
All the other actors started to trickle in behind me. Half of them had been working on the show all week and the other half, like me, had been brought in today as extras for the airport terminal scene. I introduced myself to the two actors playing Airport Cops #1 & 2 and took my seat, pulling out something to read and expecting to sit a while.
The actors, several of whom seemed to know each other from other productions, talked shop - what was filming in the Bay Area, the good and bad agents and casting directors in the Bay Area and how great the pay was if you made a national TV commercial.
The talent coordinator came into the room and asked those of us who hadn't worked on the show before to come to his office to fill out a few forms. Finished with the paperwork, I returned to the holding area and my reading.
A few minutes later, a tall, thin man in his mid-30's with short, wiry hair that looked uncombed, and a couple days' growth of stubble on his face, poked his head in the door and said good morning and asked how everyone was doing. Everyone cheerily said "Hi" and he seemed to know most of the actors in the room. Turns out he was the director.
The wardrobe gal came back in the room and went through each actor and what they had brought to wear for their scenes. She was very laid-back and seemed pleased with what all the actors were wearing. She asked me and the other two cops our shirt sizes and came back a few minutes later with a black, short-sleeve police officer's shirt with an official looking seal on each shoulder.
An overweight, gruff man popped his head in the room next and said he needed to see the cops. He told us he was the property master - the prop man - and he had utility belts with fake guns, walkie-talkies, badges and name tags for the cops. He was quite emphatic in instructing us NEVER to remove the gun from its holster unless we were instructed by the director, and that these props were to be returned immediately after the scene to him and only him. He wasn't much for small talk. Okey-dokey.
I was in full wardrobe and ready to go. Which I knew from my past experience working in film and television meant I was ready to hurry up and wait. I took my seat again and went back to my newspaper.
I looked out the one window in the room and noticed it was starting to get light outside. It was now seven a.m. The talent coordinator entered the room, told us the airport scenes were first up and he needed several actors immediately, including Cop #1. I stayed behind in the holding room with Cop #2.
I read and talked for another hour while nothing happened. Then the talent coordinator came back and announced they were ready for Cops #2 & 3. I got up quickly and followed him out the door, leaving my backpack and reading material behind.
The Administration Building served as an airport terminal in Indiana.
We followed him out a side door to a car in front of the building. He motioned for me and the other extra playing Airport Cop #2 to get inside. He drove up a block, over and around another two blocks and then circled back past the building where we had just been, only to make a left turn into the parking lot of the main Administration Building, which would be serving as the front of an airport terminal in Indiana for our scene. The funny thing about the whole ride is I'm sure we could have walked it in just the same amount of time.
As we were dropped off in the middle of the set, we quickly scurried out of the line of sight of the cameras and over to the 20 or so crew members standing behind camera one. There were a couple of flat screen monitors off to the side where you could see the feed from the two video cameras filming the scene. I stood and watched as they filmed a scene. A police car was stopped behind a Ford Explorer SUV in the front of the terminal while Airport Cop #1 spoke with the driver of the SUV.
They quickly shot a few more takes of the scene and then a call came out for Airport Cops #2 & 3. I was on.
We walked over and the director introduced himself and outlined what was going on in the scene. It wasn't until that moment I realized there wasn't an actual script with dialogue that the lead actors had memorized. Everything was just generally outlined and improvised. This really was a low budget show.
The same Administration Building as seen in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade.
The director walked back behind one of the cameras and an assistant director yelled "Background!" Four cars driven by members of the crew started to drive in circles in front of the curbside of the terminal, then out of the scene and through the parking lot and back in the scene from the other side.
Four extras hired to be customers at the airport came in and out of doors in the front of building, crossed through the scene and then went back in a different door, only to emerge again from another door.
To create the illusion of activity even further, members of the crew who were idle during the shot moved back and forth in front of the two cameras, so close that they could only be seen in silhouette.
Everything and everyone was recycled through the set over and over again during the scene. You have to make use of every resource you have on a low budget set.
I straightened my back and puffed out my chest, trying to look as tough as possible in my role as a cop. We ran through the scene and the director said "Cut!" He walked over and told us we were a little too timid. Feel free to talk and yell and be more demonstrative. In other words, the scene needed more energy. We tried it again.
Everyone got back in their starting positions and the assistant director yelled "Background!" and the passing cars and airport passengers started to move. The director yelled "Action!" and we started our scene. I noticed at the end of the scene that the other two actors playing the cops were at the front of the Ford Explorer, so I moved around towards the back. And channeling my sense memory of what interactions I had experienced in the past with airport cops (particularly the rude parking Nazis at SFO) I did something actors would refer to as "in the moment" - I slammed the back of the truck with my left hand and loudly yelled, "Come on, ladies! Let's move it out!"
I could sense the actors in the car jump just after I slammed their vehicle with my hand. The director yelled "Cut!" and the actor closest to me in the front seat told me that was great when I hit the car and it really made her scared. The director liked the energy of the scene much better and pointed to me and said, "That was great."
Over the course of the next two hours we would proceed to re-enact the same 30 second scene about twelve different times with the cameras moved to four different positions. And this is when I learned a crucial lesson in film acting; if you decide to do something in a moment of inspirational improvisation in the first "master" take of a scene, be prepared to do the same damn thing for the next two hours as the scene is shot over and over again to provide enough different angles to allow "coverage" for the editor. My left hand was sore by the end of the morning.
(The Administration Building on Treasure Island is seen numerous times in this clip from The Parent Trap.)
The entire crew was incredibly fast and efficient. Although much lower in budget, this production moved much quicker than a normal TV show. There weren't any adjustments for hair and make-up, no scenes were stopped because an actor forgot a line because all the dialogue was improvised and the lighting set-up was so spare that there wasn't a lot of time spent rearranging lights (lighting is what really slows things down on a big budget set).
The final take was shot with a Steadicam camera (a camera on a carefully balanced rig that allows the cameraman to walk next to an actor in a scene and keep the camera smoothly in position as if it's gliding or floating) - the first time I had ever seen one in use close up - and after three takes with the Steadicam, the director felt he had enough and a "wrap" was called on the scene. It was 10:45 a.m.
So here's the strangest thing, to me, about the entire experience. For three hours we had a crew of 20 and 15 actors filming in front of the the Administration Building dressed up to look like an airport terminal in Indiana. And if one of those two cameras had been allowed to turn around for just a moment, this is the view we had as we filmed the scene:
The view of San Francisco as seen from Treasure Island.
That, my friends, is Hollywood.
With our scene finished, this time we just walked from the set back to the production office. I stood with my arms raised while the prop master removed my gun, belt, walk-talkie, name tag and badge. I took off my airport cop shirt and handed it back to the wardrobe gal. I walked into the talent coordinator's office and signed a sheet of paper and was paid in cash for the day's work.
Because I wasn't permitted to have a camera or cell phone or take any pictures during the filming of my scene, I stopped at the set on my way out to take a couple of pictures. Every airline and baggage claim sign had already been removed. The set was completely clear of all signs of a TV crew 30 minutes after we had wrapped.
I walked down to the rocks on the edge of the water and admired the spectacular view of The City. I thought how enormously profitable this island would be for development. And then I got in my car and drove off. Up the hill to Yerba Buena Island and then back on to the Bay Bridge. I got home just after noon, ending my first day as an extra on a TV show.
